a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Game 26 – Bleh

I looooove East games. It’s seriously wonderful when the game ends and I can even listen to the entire post-game show before I have to go work–instead of being super early, super late, and/or rushing off during halftime.

Prior to the game, #224 was revealed to be Maurice Cheeks, and #225 to be Reggie Theus.

This turned out to be another one of those bleh games. Close enough to make you hope, not close enough to pull out a win.

In the opening minutes of the second half, Paul Pierce lost his shoe and the Jazz had a 5-on-4 situation. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how the sequence unfolded. CJ puts up a 3 and misses, Rondo picks up the board, and KG gets a dunk on the other end. Then CJ turns it over and Ray-Ray hits a 3. It was pretty much how the night went.

Pierce doing his best “dead cockroach” impression

Career night for Sap–32 and 10 with 2 each of assists, steals, and blocks. But given the final result (“L”), I can’t find it in my heart to give Sap the hyping he deserves (12th straight double double). And once again, oh-so-sadly, I didn’t want to see DWill taking shots and especially not 3s.

During the post-game show, someone called in to basically say that we don’t need Boozer when we have Sap (those calls come in every day, don’t they?) Locke responded, unbelievably, by saying that Boozer has the best hands of any player in the NBA.

Is he completely insane? Whether it’s because he’s a blind Boozer fan or that he’s employed by the LHM Group, Locke has always been a big Boozer homer (i.e. refusing to let anti-Boozer callers talk and yelling at them) and ignores his flaws. Yes, Boozer has a great touch around the basket on offense some of the time, but the rest of the time AND on defense, he is fumbly and prone to being stripped. Ironically or perhaps expectedly, his feet are like that too. On offense, he is nimble and quick; on defense, his feet are cemented to the ground. Given that at least 50% of the time Boozer’s hands are not a plus, I’m in disbelief that Locke would proclaim such a thing.